Ventura de la Vega

Ventura de la Vega

Ventura de la Vega (born July 14, 1807 in Buenos Aires , Argentina , † August 2, 1865 in Madrid ) was an originally from Argentina playwright and librettist for Zarzuelas , who spent most of his life in Spain and therefore mostly to the Spanish Literature is counted.

Life

Ventura de la Vega was brought to Spain by his father as a child and went to school at the Colegio de San Mateo in Madrid. After the early death of his father, he lived a bohemian life in the style of romanticism . Together with José de Espronceda he was a member of the secret organization "Sociedad de Los Numantinos", which is why he was banished to a monastery for some time. Because of its Argentine origins, he was nicknamed "El argentino"; Using a play on words with his first name (Ventura means "luck" in Spanish), he was also called "Ventura sin ventura" (The luckless) because he often suffered great economic hardship.

From 1836 he “converted” to a more conservative worldview. In 1838 he married an opera singer, Manuela Oreiro de Lema. Admired for his verse art and his satires , he became the literature teacher and private secretary of Queen Isabella II , later State Secretary and in 1847 director of the Teatro Español. He had great success in Spain as a playwright and zarzuela writer.

In 1845 he became a member of the Real Academia Española . He died in Madrid in 1865.

plant

Ventura de la Vega is mostly counted among the Spanish literature of realism . He has written more than 80 translations and adaptations of French plays (especially by Eugène Scribe ), as well as some poems.

drama

As a playwright, Ventura de la Vega was based on classicist models such as Leandro Fernández de Moratín and Manuel Bretón de los Herreros and fought against the romantic renewals of his time. He represented a bourgeois value system and wrote mainly realistic salon comedies.

His best-known play is the comedy El hombre de mundo (1845); it is regarded as the forerunner of the so-called "Alta Comedia" and is characterized by a bourgeois atmosphere and careful metrics . The main theme is the failure of a don Juan type who wanted to disturb the happiness of a marriage.

Ventura de la Vega also wrote the historical drama Don Fernando de Antequera (1847), the classic tragedy La muerte de César (1865) and the libretto for Francisco Asenjo Barbieri : Jugar con Fuego , a Zarzuela in three acts (1851, based on one French original); it marks the beginning of the romantic Zarzuela in Spain and is still performed.

Ventura de la Vega achieved later joint successes with Barbieri with the following works: La cisterna encantada (1853), El marqués de Caravaca (1853, the continuation of Jugar con fuego ) and Un tesoro escondido (1861).

With Joaquín Gaztambide he wrote El estreno de un artista (1852) and La verbena de la paloma (premiered in 1894 with music by Tomás Bretón); the latter takes place in the popular Madrid ambience and was very successful.

Poetry

• Rimas americanas (La Habana, 1833)
• Obras poéticas (Paris, 1866)
• Poesías líricas (Madrid, 1873).

Secondary literature

• Franzbach, Martin: History of Spanish Literature at a Glance . Stuttgart: Reclam, 2002 (= Universal Library; No. 8861) ISBN 3-15-008861-5
• Gumbrecht, Hans U .: A history of Spanish literature , 1484 pages, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1998, ISBN 3518580620
• Neuschäfer, Hans-Jörg: Spanische Literaturgeschichte , 446 pages, Stuttgart: Metzler, 2nd edition 2006, ISBN 3476018571
• Strosetzki, Christoph: History of Spanish Literature , 404 pages, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2., unchanged. Edition 1996, ISBN 3484503076

Web links

• Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes (some works in Spanish)